Development Data Challenge: see the projects and code from our hackday

Development Data Challenge at Guardian offices in London. Photograph: Publish What You Fund

How many villages in South Sudan are more than 2km from a water source? What projects are aid donors funding in Malawi, and where? What is the relationship between media coverage and money pledged for disasters and emergencies? And how good is the data recently published by aid donors?

More development data is in the public domain than ever before. Governments have made recent commitments to transparency and open data. And a growing number of donors are publishing data in common formats such as the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard. But the debate is quickly shifting from the quantity to the quality of information released.

Two projects over the weekend honed in on the data donors have recently published to the IATI. One tried to explore whether it is possible to track funds from donor agencies through their partners to delivery on the ground (unfortunately, they found, it isn't). Another group worked on tools to examine the quality of data donors have published to IATI (unfortunately, it seems, it isn't always very good).

Examining the relationship between media coverage and funding for major disasters and emergencies

It is often suggested that donors fail to respond to certain crises due to a lack of media coverage. This is what some call "the CNN effect" – the idea that the media can compel government action, directly or via public opinion. The Guardian previously looked at how online media, the public and aid donors responded to the famine in Somalia. This project worked to compare levels of broadcast media attention and humanitarian aid given to five major crises.

Geo-locating data on health and education services in India

This project used geo-located data to map local health and education services in India, with a view to creating simple mobile applications, allowing users to search for the nearest clinics offering vaccinations and health checks. The (untested) assumption is that local communities have – or will have – data packages on their mobile phones that would allow them to use such apps on the move.

Mapping villages' access to water sources in South Sudan

A map showing the location of settlements and water sources (blue) in South Sudan's Central Equatoria state

This group used new, previously unpublished data from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to map settlements in South Sudan's Central Equatoria state and their distance from water sources. They hope to find and add population and funding data, to estimate how many people (rather than how many settlements) lack easy access to water and whether donors funding water projects are targeting regions most in need.

• Get the data: The team used data gathered by the UNDP South Sudan information management working group.

What projects are aid donors funding in Malawi and where?

A map showing the location of aid projects in Malawi, with an example of the detail of projects

This project maps the location of aid projects in Malawi, displaying funding data by sector, amount of funding, the project's status and donors involved. A next step could be to examine and display funding including details on which organisations receive it.

Can we track aid funding down the chain from donor to delivery?

This group tried to use data recently published to the IATI to trace the flow of aid money from donors through their partners and down to delivery points "on the ground". In some cases it found the data published was incomplete. In other cases it found unintelligible or unusable information; in many of the UK's data files, for example, partner organisations aren't named.

• Get the data: The IATI registry, which links to raw data in the IATI xml format.

How good is the data being published by aid donors?

This group worked on a set of tools to scrutinise the quality of data recently published by aid donors to the IATI standard. Among the early findings were that only 20% of IATI data files include some information on what results – if any – have been achieved by aid projects. Less than 0.002% include details on any conditions attached to donor funding. Next steps include developing tests to examine what data has been published, and how useful it is, and to see how to weight different tests to get an overall data quality "score".

• Get the data: The IATI registry, which links to raw data in the IATI xml format.

We'd like to know what you think about the projects above. Can you help fill any of the gaps? Or do you think there's a particular way they should be taken forward? We would also like to hear from attendees on any additional thoughts or plans around what they've started.

Sign up for the Guardian Today

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.